Re: LTSP and lessdisks
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On 16-06-2005 00:18, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> LTSP is much easier to install in environments where the terminals may
> be different hardware architectures. packages specifically designed for
> LTSP may integrate more smoothly with LTSP terminals, but the set of
> available packages does not even approach those available to debian.
That is true. I sure want lessdisks working on lots of arches, but
suspect the issue is rather irrelevant for Skolelinux, as the distro is
i386 only (also LTSP packages).
> the user base and documentation for LTSP is much, much broader than
> lessdisks.
This is closer to what I believe is the main factor: ease of use.
For an experienced Debian systems administrator, lessdisks is great
because you get to mess with whatever you want the way you are used to
do it in debian. But for Skolelinux users lessdisks is too complex and
the huge possibilities of customization is irrelevant.
Skolelinux is Debian without the lots of confusing choices. LTSP can be
seen similarly as lessdisks without the lots of confusing choices.
> many skolelinux installations already are using LTSP- this is a very big
> factor, i imagine.
When lessdisks becomes as easy to install and administer as LTSP, I
think many will favor the "all binaries are supported by Debian"
advantage of lessdisks over the "others do it like that" of LTSP.
I believe it takes more than debconf preseeding of the installation,
however: Plug'n'pray(tm) support for sound, removable devices and local
printers needs to be supported as well. Hell, the implementation in LTSP
is crappy (insecure and inflexible) but it is there, and relatively easy
to "activate" even if it means the local admin must download external an
external tarball or script and add to the installation manually.
> lessdisks is almost entirely debian-based, and more recent packages will
> hopefully make it into the official Debian archive someday. LTSP is not
> yet in the official debian archive(what is blocking that?), and is
> effectively it's own linux distribution, with it's own release cycle and
> security updates.
Exactly that is blocking, I believe: The chance of getting a complete
system stuffed into a Debian package accepted into Debian is rather
small: Debian requires a package to be fully compilable from source, and
for the next release of Debian, Etch, it is proposed to make mandatory
what is already common sense but unwritten: if a library exist in debian
then that library should be linked against dynamically instead of
duplicating source code in other packages (amnong other stuff LTSP
includes in its source all of the XFree86 source code independently from
the source maintained by the Debian X11 Strike Force).
> the size of lessdisks source and related packages is under 1MB (plus
> whatever debian packages you use, which can largely be shared with the
> server installation CD or other media), i'm not sure how the LTSP
> packages are, but i believe they are fairly large.
Size is just an indication of what bothers me the most: binary chunks of
code not shared with the rest of Debian so not "shaken" (constantly
security- and stability-tested) nearly as well.
- Jonas
- --
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
- Enden er nær: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm
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